[Freddy]

Looks like a beta will be available tomorrow, just wondering if anyone was thinking of give it a go ?  It seems like they will cap the number of beta versions so you'd best be quick.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817190.stm

Weird; it only seems like five minutes ago since Vista was new.

[Maviarab]

Your right it does seem like 5 mins ago...time flies etc

[Art]

Yes, somewhere hidden deep in the Mr. Art Archives is a copy of Windows 1.0
I also had an 8" floppy disk from our old Burrough's computer at work. It had
a whopping 20 meg hard drive that took 3 hours to back up on 10" reel to reel
tapes!! Ah yes...the good old days!

Like one frog said to the other, "Time's fun when you're having flies!" 

[Dante]

Tried it, it's fun. Fun to laugh at, I mean.

They've speeded up the desktop a bit, so everything feels faster. Still far more bugs then Vista at the mo, but thats because it's in beta.

Yet again, Microsoft has metaphorically taken a look at your boiler, tightened a bolt, left and charged you the same amount it would cost to buy a brand new one.

[Freddy]

I've been toying over the idea of installing the Windows 7 Beta and thought others here may be in the same frame of mind, so I am posting this for your information, well as a starter :

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2009/01/5_things_you_need_to_know_about_windows_7.html

Anyone thinking of giving it a go ?

[Maviarab]

Dante, sorry but from a self confessed MS hater, its hard to take your comments with any seriousness.

Freddy, I am considering it actually yeah, as I bet most Vista games will be fine on '7' so may be easier to go for  that and bypass Vista altogether.

After a new drive so may install it on there and see what its like and then make a judgment on it.

Thanks for the link.

[Art]

Sorry, but this is one upgrade (?) than I'm NOT going to jump on as it took me a lot of work to remove Vista and start over with XP the last time (when Vista was offered). As fas as I'm concerned, I'm going to wait for a while because me and my XP seem to be getting along rather nicely at the moment!
 

[Maviarab]

 

me and my XP seem to be getting along rather nicely at the moment!

Have to agree with that one Art, love my current slimmed down version of XP....been trouble free for longer than I can remember...still tempted to try 7 on a new drive though, if hate it will just plug this drive back in again

[Freddy]

Yeah I read elsewhere that you had problems with Vista Art.  Sounds like a lot of people prefer XP and when I was looking at getting a new PC I found a lot of pre-built ones came with the option to downgrade to XP.  I'm not sure why but I have a bit more time for Windows 7, from what I have read so far people think it is an improvement on Vista - still much research to do though.  I was thinking of getting a new hard-drive to install it too.

Also read (at V-Humans I think) that it is possible to run XP on a Virtual Machine and that it runs faster that way, so that might be an option in the future.

[Freddy]

This could be an option :

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/overview.mspx

[Freddy]

For anyone interested :

"Windows 7 moving toward 2009 release"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10162609-56.html

[Maviarab]

I am very interested...but really can't justify £200 or so for the new release. Will probably do what I( always do, Ill wait till windows (?) is announced and in beta then upgrade to 7 hehe

[Freddy]

Well I'm undecided too.  This gave me a wry smile though - MicroSoft trying to sell businesses Vista rather than have them wait for 7.  Let's screw them twice hey ?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10161620-56.html

[Data]

Some of you guys probably know I was lucky to get Windows 7 before its release date, well I've had about a month at playing with it now and have found some nice little tweaks.

So if anyone is interested check these out.

For me Win7 had 2 main things that I really didn't like.

The nag screens and a lot of hard drive activity in the background.

You can turn off the nag screens:

Open control panel, click on Action center, click on Change user account control settings, now put the slider all the way down. (No more nags)

The hard disk activity was the indexing of the drives, personally I hardly ever use the search function in windows to find files so for me its better just to turn off indexing on all hard drives.

Open my Computer, right click a drive, go to properties, now remove the tick from allow files on this drive to have contents indexed.

I thought that after a while windows would finish the indexing but it would seem not, in the end I got so fed up with it that I had to turn it off.

DreamScene has been removed from Win7, it was in Vista, if you don't know what it is, it allowed the user to put an HD video on the desktop as wallpaper, well there is a way to put it in 7, I have, and some of the slow moving ones are very flash, ok its eye candy but nice all the same.

Download it from here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/customization/5636-windows-dream-scene-win-7-a.html

Then do the fix from here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/customization/23793-help-dreamscene.html

You can download free DreamScenes from here:
http://www.dreamscene.org/gallery.php

[Freddy]

Thanks Datahopa, I know that will come in useful